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From today’s editorials: Gov. David Paterson could sound a little more enthusiastic about having the state’s top elected post, especially if he wants another shot at it.

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Mario Cuomo relished being governor, as only an orator could. He proudly spoke of an immigrants’ son’s journey, from “the other side of the tracks where he was born, to occupy the highest seat in the greatest state of the greatest nation in the only world we know.”

George Pataki similarly set out as governor proclaiming his love for “this state, its people and places.”

And David Paterson?

Here’s how he sees being governor, under siege as he is from none other than President Obama to bow out of next year’s election.

“I did not sign up for this,” Mr. Paterson said Wednesday in Syracuse. “I wanted to be lieutenant governor. I had this grand plan that Hillary Clinton was going to become president. Maybe the governor would appoint me to the Senate.”

Reassuring, isn’t it?

Maybe the governor could concentrate on doing better at the job in which he now finds himself. Maybe he could deliver on his stern declaration that he’s in the race to stay with a demonstration as to just why he deserves a four-year term of his own.

When the words to that effect did come Wednesday, they were hollow.

“I’m still here with all of you,” Mr. Paterson said, vowing to continue to face the challenge of leading a state in a fiscal and political crisis.

“If you ever wanted to know the plan or the course you could take to become unpopular, be governor of this state starting March 17, 2008,” Mr. Paterson continued. “No matter who you are, I guarantee you, no one will like you.”

People might respect the governor, though. They did before, after all. But he needs to give New Yorkers a reason to believe in him.

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Add this to the governor’s confounding remarks. Mr. Paterson also said on Wednesday that tightening tax loopholes on people making more than $1 million — which he supported — has had its own cost, namely rich people leaving the state.

“We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state,” he said. As for how many jobs and how much lost population, the word from his office is that it’s hard to quantify.

The larger point, though, is apparently this. The same special interests that pushed taxing the rich as one sensible way to help ease the state’s fiscal mess — which it was — seem to have disappeared, now that they’ve gotten what they wanted. Or so the governor’s office says, invoking a larger cause of everyone in New York working together.

On that later point, it’s at least easier to follow an embattled governor. Again, though, he has to lead.